Which of These 12 Forces Controls Evolution?

If you listen to a modern molecular biologist, he may tell you with great confidence that he knows what controls evolution. But the issue may not be as cut-and-dried as such a person may think. I can think of at least 12 different forces that may control evolution on our planet. Below is a very balanced list of possibilities, which covers a wide spectrum of alternatives.

Possibility 1: Blind Chance

This is the typical answer given by scientific academia in regard to what controls evolution. The theory is that random events such as cosmic rays or DNA copying mistakes cause chance mutations in the DNA stored in cells of an organism. This creates a variation in characteristics in a species, and those variations that have more survival value end up getting reproduced more, because of natural selection and survival of the fittest.

I do not exclude the possibility, but there are some reasons why it may be problematic as an explanation of what controls evolution. One issue is that mutations are random changes, and most random changes are harmful. Think of DNA as like programming code, and then ask yourself: what is the effect going to be of randomly changing something in a block of programming code? Any programmer will tell you: you'll probably mess things up. So how it is obvious that we should explain something such as the evolution of a highly specialized animal by evoking random mutations?

Another issue is that while blind chance evolution may be a pretty good way of explaining how we got from microbes to mammals, such a concept may be insufficient for explaining how we got microbes in the first place, and how we got from mammals to men. The latter, in particular, requires the appearance of all kinds of advanced human characteristics such as self-consciousness, spirituality, altruism, philosophical abilities, math abilities, and language abilities that may be very hard or impossible to explain by mere blind chance and mutations, for reasons discussed here.

Possibility 2: God

Of course, many believe that God is in control of evolution. One possible issue with this idea is that our universe seems to have many, many planets. Our sun is merely one star among billions in our galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies. There could easily be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets on which life is evolving right now. If one imagines that the creator of the universe is directly involved in the evolution of life on each and every planet in our vast universe, that seems to be assigning a tremendous amount of work for any one being to do at one time. Perhaps too much work.

Possibility 3: Angels

Given the existence of as many as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or more planets on which life is evolving right now, it could be that a creator of our universe chose to divide up the job of controlling evolution on planets. Such a creator could have created subordinate spiritual beings to handle some of the work. The best word we have for such a concept is “angels,” although some might prefer some other term to avoid Christian connotations. It could be that some local spiritual beings are in control of our evolution, while the creator of the universe busies himself with other more pressing matters. Such angels might or might not look anything like traditional depictions of angels. 
 
Possibility 4: Extraterrestrials

The idea that extraterrestrials from another planet have had a hand in earthly evolution is one that has been around for a long time. One flavor of it is the theory of panspermia. There are quite a few ancient astronaut enthusiasts who propose various theories of how Earth's history has been affected by alien intervention. One possible line of evidence in support of this theory are the many UFO sightings. Some UFO enthusiasts even have elaborate theories of how UFOs are abducting humans and gathering genetic samples from them, for the sake of creating a hybrid race of extraterrestrials and humans.

Other people attempt to explain the origin of earthly life by imagining extraterrestrial intervention billions of years ago, although that just pushes the problem farther away in time and space, leaving the problem of how life originated on the home planet of those extraterrestrials.

Possibility 5: Future earth inhabitants

This possibility is not quite as outrageous as it may seem. Researchers such as Daryl Bem of Cornell University have gathered evidence for precognition, an anomalous human ability to gain knowledge of the future. Some think that such evidence implies a doctrine of retrocausation, the idea that someone in the future can influence something that happened in the past (although there is debate about whether one implies the other). If the idea of retrocausation is valid, it could be that the current evolution of our planet is being controlled by people in the future, who may be taking care to make sure that our evolution is not incompatible with their eventual existence. In fact, Scientific American just published an article with some weird quantum goobledygook that may mean the door is open to such a possibility.

Possibility 6: Elevated afterlife spirits

Again I may say: this possibility is not quite as outrageous as it may seem. Near-death experiences and similar phenomena provide a possible evidential foundation for believing in an afterlife. Sometimes people who claim to be knowledgeable about the topic claim that in an afterlife there are various levels of existence or planes of existence, and that if you progress to a high enough spiritual level you are given the responsibility of controlling evolution on distant planets. But if elevated spiritual beings in an afterlife might control evolution on other planets, they might also control evolution on our own planet. 
 
Of course, some would be depressed by the idea that our evolution might be controlled by our departed ancestors, but the idea is not more depressing than the idea that blind chance controls our evolution.

Possibility 7: Cosmic programming

On other posts on this web site (here and here) I have discussed the theory of a programmed material universe. The idea is that the universe has a kind of information infrastructure that drives cosmic evolution, propelling the universe on to ever higher heights of glory. Such an information infrastructure might include programming, a cosmic computation facility, and a cosmic database facility. Under such a theory, the universe has been programmed for success from the very beginning. Given no special attention, a particular planet might achieve astonishing feats of evolution, not by blind chance, but because the universe is programmed for such successes. Under such a theory the universe reaches levels of evolutionary success rather like a jet plane on autopilot might reach different destinations. It could be that evolution succeeds on planet after planet because the whole universe is in effect “on autopilot.” The next phase in human evolution may be something written in the details of the universe's software.

Does cosmic software control evolution?

Possibility 8: Puppet Masters in a Fourth Dimension

Imagine if there were beings in a world of only two dimensions: height and width. They would be like little photo cutouts moving around on a flat puzzle board. A person in a 3-dimensional world could move his hand down and change things in that 2D world, perhaps without any of those 2D beings noticing the intervention. Similarly, there could be beings in a fourth dimension who overlook our 3D world, intervening without us noticing. Such beings may be the puppet masters in control of evolution.

Possibility 9: Ourselves

Perhaps to find out who controls evolution, we need merely look in the mirror. It could be that biological evolution has been overshadowed by cultural evolution and technological evolution, which we ourselves control. So maybe we are the masters of our own fate.

Possibility 10: Cycles of evolution

Some historians such as Oswald Spengler have adopted cyclical theories of history. It could be that evolution works in cycles. Perhaps over and over again the same thing happens: life arises to ever greater heights, reaching a state of great intelligence, which leads to great power of destructiveness. Such technological power may lead to the destruction of the intelligent life form in a horrifying apocalypse. Then millions of years later life may again begin to move toward intelligence, only to destroy itself again after reaching great technological power. Such a cycle may have played out several times before, or this may be the first iteration in the cycle. We may be mere pawns in this sad cycle.

Possibility 11: Physical predestination

It could be that the end result of evolution is really determined by some blind deterministic factors which lock our planet into some destiny we cannot change. Evolution may be controlled by some inscrutable force of fate that we have no power to change. For further information please view Verdi's opera La Forza del Destino.

Possibility 12: Morphic gravitation

As the last possibility, I will mention an exotic possibility that is fascinating to consider. Let us imagine that for many biological species there is some external form or blueprint or schema that represents a more developed or evolved version of that species. Such a form or blueprint or schema may be called a morphic prototype, and it may exist as information rather than a material model. It could be that a species somehow tends to be very gradually “pulled” towards such a morphic prototype, through a slow process we can call morphic gravitation. We can imagine this process as being a tiny bit like one of those movie morphs, but instead of the morph occurring in a few seconds it might take place over many, many generations. So imagine a morphic prototype of the human species that is more evolved than our current species. Perhaps that morphic prototype depicts humans with larger brains. It might be that gradually our species is being pulled towards that prototype, which results in humans gradually gaining larger and larger brains. Such morphic prototypes might somehow have arisen naturally, or they might be part of some grand deliberate scheme for driving evolution.

Conclusion

I conclude that we simply don't know what force controls evolution. There are too many possibilities for us to have any certainty about the matter.

Brain Scan Stunts Are Not Mind Reading

Yesterday the top link on the Reddit futurology subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/futurology) was an article with a headline Mind Reader: Meet The Man Who Records and Stores Your Thoughts, Dreams and Memories. Over 700 readers have “liked” this article. But this article is junk technology reporting. Nobody has the slightest idea of how to record or store thoughts, dreams, or memories (outside of conventional media).

The article discusses a company founded by one Donald Marks. The company has some technology for doing brain scanning and storing the results. “"Some people call it 'thought identification' but it is essentially mind reading,” says Marks. “It is the process of recognizing activation patterns in the brain and identifying what thoughts are associated with them." Marks seems to be guilty of shameless overblown hype here, something he has a motive for because he has a financial interest in hyping his own company. The process his company is using is not at all mind reading. No one knows how to do any such thing.

There are various ways to scan the brain. One way is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures change in blood oxygenation. Then there's CT scanning, and a process called PET. Then there's MEG, which measures magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain. Then there's NIRS, another technique for measuring blood oxygenation in the brain.

None of these methods give one single bit of direct information about what someone is thinking or perceiving. However, scientists can try an elaborate technique for matching up brain scans taken at a particular time with data about what a person was observing at some particular time, or what a person says he was thinking at a particular time. It doesn't work very well at all, because two person's brains don't look the same way when they are thinking the same thing, or looking at the same thing. Even a single person's brain doesn't look exactly the same way when that person is looking at the same thing or thinking the same thought at two different times.

But there does seem to be a little bit of a tendency for one brain to look a little like another brain when they are observing the same thing or thinking the same thing. So scientists are able to do a little bit of what I may call a parlor trick. The parlor trick consists of analyzing sets of brain scans, and studying what a brain scan tends to look like when a particular thought is being thought, or a particular thing has being observed. Scientists can use that analysis to make a very weak limited-scope prediction about a person's thought or observations.

For example, when a person thinks about (or observes) something burning in a fire, his brain scan might tend to look a little different from the way it would look if he were thinking of (or observing) someone relaxing in an ocean. So given a set of brain readings, a scientist or a computer might be able to say something like, “It is 20% more likely that he is thinking about relaxing in an ocean than that he is thinking about someone burning in a fire.”

Should we call this type of thing “mind reading”? We should not. A proper term for it is brain scan correlation analysis. But such a term does not attract press attention or investors, so people doing such brain scan correlation analysis might resort to hype, and call it “mind reading” instead. Is there much use that we can foresee for brain scan correlation analysis? Not really. It's probably a dead end. It's basically a kind of parlor trick or stunt, good for attracting a few headlines, but not much else.

In my local library there are many Chinese books I can't read. I might create a new technique for trying to understand Chinese. I might take pictures of the covers of the Chinese books, and run these images through a computer program that correlates certain pictures on the book cover with Chinese words on the book covers. I could probably get a few results I could brag about using such a technique, which might attract some press attention, with headlines about a new computer program that can read Chinese. But such a technique would really be a parlor trick and a dead end. I would never be able to take it much farther, and never be able to really understand Chinese by using such a technique. Such a technique would be similar to using our current type of brain scans to try to read minds.

The items being read in brain scanning are like cloudy blobs, which severely limits the amount of usable information that can be derived from them. If you consider that the same person will have a different set of cloudy blobs when thinking the same thing at two different times (which would differ from the set of cloudy blobs that some other person would produce), it is hard to foresee much use that could be made of such analytics. One application you can think of is creating some kind of lie detector that would work from analyzing brain scans (because the cloudy blobs might look different when someone is lying). But such an approach would probably not be any more accurate than the existing technology of a polygraph. 

 The cloudy blobs of brain scans

The headline in the story I have cited (referring to “the man who records and stores your thoughts, dreams and memories”) is utterly misleading. What is being recorded is the brain scans of people while they are having thoughts, dreams, or recollections, not the thoughts, dreams, and recollections themselves. The story implies that such storage may be useful because a science of some later age may be able to analyze the cloudy blobs of brain scans more accurately, so that they can figure out memories, thoughts, and dreams from studying these cloudy blobs. There is no reason to be hopeful that any such thing will ever happen. It seems like something along the lines of saying, “Freeze yourself at death, and science will be able to figure out how to revive your body.” We might be able to figure out exactly how thoughts and memories are stored in the brain, but that would require science vastly more advanced than the crude indirect techniques of brain scanning correlation analysis.

When will we actually have technology for reading minds? My guess is sometime between 50 years from now and never. Contrary to the hyped claims of modern would-be technological mind readers, we are simply nowhere near to understanding the mystery of how the brain stores memories and how it produces thoughts. Our knowledge of the matter is so limited that we are not even sure whether the brain is the sole agent involved in storing memory and producing thoughts. We might one day unravel such a mystery after many decades of additional study. Or we might never figure it out.

The 5 Greatest Moments in the History of the Universe

I looked to see whether I could find a good list of the 10 greatest moments of human history, but I was disappointed. I found one bizarre list of the 10 greatest moments of human history, which included the atomic bombings that ended World War II and Hitler's appointment as chancellor of Germany (hardly what I consider great moments). Then there was another list which counts long periods of time as “moments,” which doesn't make sense. Then there was a list of “Ten Moments That Changed History” which included the invention of porridge (hardly what I consider a great moment).

Perhaps I should try to correct this Internet list shortcoming by trying to write a first-rate list of the ten greatest moments in human history. But instead I'll try something more ambitious: I'll take a stab at making a list of the five greatest moments in the history of the universe. I will consider our entire vast universe of billions of galaxies, and ask: what five moments should be considered the greatest moments in its 13-billion-year history? For this discussion, a moment will be considered as something that occurred within a very short time span. This means items such as “the origin of consciousness” or “the origin of the first technology” or “the first development of science” will have to be excluded, as they apparently did not occur at one particular moment of time.

1. The Big Bang

The first choice on the list is an obvious one. Any list of the greatest moments in the history of the universe must include the universe's first moment, the mysterious event known as the Big Bang that occurred about 13 billion years ago. According to scientists, at the time of the Big Bang, the entire universe began to expand from an infinitely dense mathematical point known as the primordial singularity. It's hard to beat that for drama and significance, particularly since the existence of everyone depended on it going just right (scientists say that if there had been a very slightly different Big Bang, none of us would be here).

2. The First Origin of Life Anywhere in the Universe

I cannot include the origin of the first galaxy or the origin of the first planet or the first star in my list of the universe's five greatest moments, as they each occurred very gradually over a period of many years. So to find the next item on the list, I must fast-forward billions of years, to the time when microscopic life first appeared in our universe. Which planet had the honor of being the first planet on which life appeared? Almost certainly it was not our planet. Given that there are billions of galaxies, the first planet on which life appeared was almost certainly not even a planet revolving around a star in our galaxy. It was probably a planet in some other galaxy, and the first origin of life in the universe probably occurred billions of years before life originated on our planet.

Such an event of fundamental importance must have been completely unrecorded. Given the vastness of the universe, it is very, very unlikely that anyone will ever be able to figure out what was the first planet on which life originated.

3. The First Interplanetary or Interstellar Communication Between Civilizations

Another moment in the universe's history that deserves a place on my list is the first moment in the history of the universe when two civilizations existing on different planets were ever able to establish communication. Such an event may have first occurred when two civilizations existing in different solar systems were able to achieve radio communication with each other (something that is much, much easier than making contact by an interstellar voyage). Or it might have been that the first two civilizations on different planets to communicate with each other may have been planets within a single solar system.

Given the vast age of the universe, such an event very likely occurred long, long ago, probably millions or billions of years ago.

4. The First Interstellar Voyage Reaching Another Star

Another great moment in the universe's history must have been the first time that a spaceship from one solar system was ever able to reach another solar system. The distance between stars is so great that it is very difficult to estimate how often interstellar travel occurs. There could be some special physics that allows interstellar travel to occur commonly. Or perhaps there is no such physics, and interstellar travel only occurs rarely, because of the enormous costs and great lengths of time needed for the journey between stars. But very probably some civilization in the universe has launched a spacecraft that has successfully traveled from one solar system to another. The first time any such spacecraft ever reached another solar system might be considered one of the greatest moments in the history of the universe. 

It might have looked like this

5. The First Interplanetary Physical Contact Between Different Intelligent Species

Another great moment in the universe's history was the first time that intelligent creatures on one planet ever made face-to-face physical contact with intelligent creatures on some other planet, creatures belonging to some entirely different species. This might have been something like a “handshake across the stars,” when an intelligent species in one solar system traveled to a planet in some other solar system, after crossing the vast interstellar void. Or, it might have been something requiring a much shorter voyage. If two planets in a solar system ever developed intelligent life at about the same time, the first interplanetary physical contact between different species might have been merely a case of astronauts from one planet traveling to another planet in the same solar system. Given the great age of the universe, it is likely that this event has already occurred, although we will never know which case of direct contact between different intelligent species was the first such event to occur in the universe's history. Such an event might have occurred after many different interstellar voyages looking to find another intelligent species. 

We are used to being able to see many of the greatest moments in human history on our television screens, either by looking at photography of the event taken while it happened, or by looking at historical documentaries that describe the event very well. But the last four items on this list will forever be shrouded in mystery. Because of the incredible vastness of a universe consisting of billions of galaxies (each made up of millions or billions of stars), we will never be able to say, “This was the planet where life first evolved in the universe,” or “This was the time when two intelligent beings from different planets first stood face-to-face.” Just as our universe keeps most of its “firsts” hidden, it also keeps most of its superlatives hidden. There's no way to tell what is the biggest planet in the universe or the fastest spaceship in the universe or the biggest city in the universe or the coldest planet in the universe. Even if you restricted yourself to only trying to keep track of the superlatives or firsts of a single galaxy, the job of being a galactic Guinness would be a very, very difficult one.

Does the Future Splash on the Present?

On the morning of August 24, 2014 around 2:00 AM EST I was woken up by a vivid dream. The dream seemed like the simplest dream I had ever had. It consisted simply of an image of a small metallic trash basket moving a few inches on the floor, without anything else being nearby.

I thought about the dream and at first thought that it might be a dream about some ghostly force moving the small trash basket. But then I thought of a simpler idea. Perhaps the dream was about an earthquake tremor. If there were a sufficiently powerful earthquake, that might cause a small trash basket to move around on the floor by itself.

Having previously suggested in a blog post that people describe unusual dreams by sending out a Twitter tweet, I decided I would do just that – as soon as I woke up in the morning. I imagined myself sending out a Twitter tweet in the morning, a tweet about a possible earthquake premonition. That would be proof of my premonition if an earthquake soon occurred, because you can't change the time stamp on Twitter tweets.

After I woke up in the morning and went to my computer, I discovered there was no longer any point in sending out such a Twitter tweet. The earthquake had already occurred. It happened about four hours after my dream, at about 6:20 AM EST (3:20 AM PST). It was the worst earthquake in the San Francisco area in 25 years. I hope all those who got injured will recover fully.

This year I have recorded some 17 dreams I have had that match either events that occurred shortly thereafter, or events that occurred (unknown to me) within the previous few days. The most dramatic case is fully described here. It's a dream I had of a meteor fall that had an uncanny resemblance to something that happened within a week. On June 30, 2014 I had another meteor dream that matched reality well. I dreamed that a meteor made a bright colored flash of light in the sky, and that an observer saw the meteor wearing sunglasses, thinking: I'm sure glad I wore these sunglasses, because that was so bright. That night while I was sleeping a British observatory reported the brightest meteor flash it had ever seen, which witnesses said produced a bright green light (it was a type called a bolide meteor).

On April 10 I had a dream about a senior White House official resigning. The resignation of a senior White House official (Sebelius) was announced later that day. On April 16 I had a dream of a power outage at a stadium. There was such an outage on the previous night (unknown to me), and a week later there were two such outages in different places. On April 25 I had a dream of astronauts on the moon carrying radiation shields (stone umbrellas, to be exact). Later in the day a scientific study was released saying that future lunar astronauts will need much better radiation shields.

On June 12 of this year I had a dream of a non-elderly adult woman completely underwater in a bathtub. The next day there was a news story of exactly such an event (a drowning), an event that only occurs about once a month to non-elderly adult women in the US. On June 13 I had a dream of someone stabbing a robber who entered that person's house. Within 24 hours (before or after) there were two such events in different places.

On July 16 I had a terrible dream of a child falling to his death from about the tenth or fifteenth floor of an apartment building. A day earlier (unknown to me) a 16-year-old described as Turkey's youngest novelist had fallen to his death from the tenth floor of an apartment building. On June 30 I had a dream about homeless people living in a hotel or motel. I learned later that day that there had been a local protest a few days earlier about a nearby motel being converted into a homeless shelter. Then there was the dream discussed here.

What I find is that for every case in which one of my dreams seems to match well something that soon happens (which may be an example of precognition), there are roughly an equal number of cases where one of my dreams seem to match well something that happened one day or a few days previously (but which I had no knowledge of). The latter examples may be cases of what is called retrocognition, which means an anomalous knowledge about something that happened in the past.

It is very hard to mathematically compute the odds of such things occurring randomly. These cases could all be due to mere coincidence. But let us at least speculate: what type of theory of time might allow for both anomalous precognition (knowledge of a future event) and anomalous retrocognition (knowledge of some past event that you never learned about through normal means)?

I can think of a crude sketch of such a theory. Let us imagine time as being like a stream of water. We can imagine ourselves as fish swimming in that stream, or we can imagine ourselves as people walking along the side of the stream. Now let us imagine events as being like rocks or pebbles that fall into the stream. We can imagine that each event causes a little splash or ripple. We can imagine that the bigger and more important the event, the bigger the splash or ripple it produces.

Such a theory might help to explain both precognition and retrocognition. Just as the splash of a rock in a stream travels in all directions, we can imagine that some type of paranormal or psychic “event splash” travels both forward and backward in time. When someone has a dream of something about to happen, it might be caused by a “backsplash” of a future event. When someone has a dream about something that recently happened (something he never learned about normally), that might be caused by a “foresplash” of the event.

I have no idea whether such a theory is valid. But I have at least learned one thing. I must discard my previous policy of waiting until the morning to send out a Twitter tweet when I have a vivid dream of something that might soon be verified. From now on when I have such a dream in the middle of the night, I am going to immediately wake up, turn on my computer, and send out a time-stamped Twitter tweet describing the dream, as soon as my dream is finished. Hopefully if I follow this policy I will one day have a nice juicy case where I can prove I dreamed about something a few hours before it happened.